When Ahmed's parents send him to a residential treatment center known as Serenity Ridge, it's with one goal: to "fix" their son, at any cost. But eleven months of abuse and overmedication leave him desperate to escape. And when the opportunity comes, Ahmed runs away to San Francisco.
There, he moves into a secret safe house shared by a group of teens. Until they become independent at eighteen, the housemates hide away from authorities, bound by rules that both protect and frustrate. Ahmed, now known as Ben, tries to adjust to a life lived in impossibly close quarters with people he barely knows, all of whom guard secrets of their own. But even if they succeed in keeping the world at bay, there's no hiding from each other or from themselves. And there's no avoiding the conflicts, crushes, loneliness, and desire that could shatter their fragile, complicated sanctuary at any moment…
Review
Well-written but unrelentingly grim, Tomas Mournian’s Hidden may be too depressing for some readers to want to read it to the end. Based on the author’s factual article “Hiding Out,” which was published in a San Francisco newspaper, the novel centers on 14 year-old Muslim American Ahmed. His stern father and duplicitous stepmother have committed him to the sanitarium ironically called Serenity Ridge to “cure” him of his homosexuality. He escapes and through a series of random events finally winds up in a San Francisco safe house with several other escapees, most of them teenagers like himself. His interaction with them in the rundown apartment, from which they are rarely allowed to emerge, forms the crux of the story. Several happenings, like Ahmed’s witnessing of a young hustler’s murder and his pursuit by the killer, may or may not be imaginary. In such a confined space interpersonal clashes are inevitable and jealousies spring up as couplings are formed and discarded. Ahmed is especially enamored of two handsome boys, J.D. and Hammer, both of whom play on his affections. It is J.D. who finally seems to return his love but the course of their relationship certainly does not “run smooth.” In a lengthy series of chapters, some of which run a mere half page, Ahmed’s story plays out. Unfortunately his frequent inability to act, even when he is severely threatened, makes him a frustrating protagonist who is often difficult to root for.
This debut novel tells the story of Ahmed, a gay 15 year old boy who is sent by his parents to a residential facility that supposedly will turn him straight. After eleven months of abuse at the hands of the facility's staff, Ahmed fakes a severe toothache to get his parents to pick him up for medical care, and then escapes from them at the first rest stop. It is there that he meets up with an underground network of facilitators who transport him to nearby San Francisco, where he hides out in an apartment filled with other teens in similar situations. Forced to stay out of sight, to dye his hair and adopt a new name (Ben), he quickly forms a common bond with the other male and female inhabitants of this overcrowded "safehouse," learning as much about them as they are cautiously willing to share. He makes friends, potential enemies, develops crushes, and ultimately learns to trust some people and be wary of others. All the time, they know that the apartment door might be broken down any minute, and they could end up being sent back to the facility. It's a thought that gives many of them a fatalistic approach to life, making it even more dangerous for everyone there.
Author Mournian has a background as a journalist, and based this story on the real-life similar safehouses and rescue network that he uncovered in a feature he wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. It is a well-written, emotionally raw chronicle of what some misguided parents put their kids through, thinking it will bring them closer together, when the exact opposite is the only possible result. This is a highly recommended, powerful book with a compelling message about acceptance and love for all.
